January 4, 2010 marked the start of a new term. With this new beginning came a new set of stresses, frustrations, and bullshit bureaucratic procedures. It’s important when navigating this treacherous craziness to remember our lessons from semesters past.
First:
Bring food, drink, and maybe a sleeping bag when visiting your Registrar or the Admin and Awards office. The same principles you use for Boxing Day sales and the premiere of a Twilight movie apply here. The first week of class is notorious for heinous lines that seemingly everyone needs to go through. So come prepared. If you bring all necessary documentation—including your SIN card, your U of T card, your driver’s license, a certificate relinquishing your first born child—you may move through the line faster. Just in case the guy in front of you didn’t plan ahead, a deck of cards and a few volumes of Tolstoy should help pass the time.
Second:
Never let ROSI see you cry. Though far from perfect, ROSI has become a useful catch-all self-service site, freeing the administration to help those with more complex issues and concerns. We need ROSI, and ROSI knows this. That’s the real reason why the waitlists close when you were this close to getting in, why your OSAP fee deferral somehow never got processed, and why ROSI is always experiencing “technical difficulties” when you need it the most. The solution here is easy. Confirm everything. “Just calling to confirm that such and such thingamabob went through. What’s that? ROSI says it didn’t? But you can do it now over the phone? I’m so glad I called!” And thus you foil ROSI’s sole objective, which is to ruin your life. Obviously.
Third:
Premature shrink-wrap removal is almost as bad as the other premature thing. You know the one I mean. People who buy their books the first week of class and remove the shrink-wrap lament it for the rest of their lives. The minute you open the shrink-wrap, you hear that someone was selling their used book for half price. Or the prof doesn’t really like that book and decides to provide links on Blackboard for “better” learning materials. Or your roommate’s sister’s BFF’s cat’s former owner took that class last year and still has all the notes and lecture slides and will “totally let you Xerox it no prob!” Or the class was designed as medieval torture and you are frantically trying to drop it before being publicly eviscerated. But because you jumped the gun, you are now stuck with a textbook that no one will buy back at full price. Woe is you.
Congratulations, you’ve made it through the first week of classes. What, a take-home midterm? Three chemistry labs? An 80-page term paper due Monday? Maybe the Admin and Awards line isn’t so bad after all.
